November 30, 2010

As Wharf from Star Trek would tell you, Chrimbus is a lunch holiday. Every Dec. 5, Winter Man comes to your cafeteria to inspect your small, decorative Chrimbus bush. If you’ve kept it trimmed and wet, Winter Man will leave you a present. If you have any questions, Wharf and Captain P’Kard will be glad to answer them in person.

But they’re not the only special guests on tour with Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, stars and creators of the Adult Swim show Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! It’s going to be a Chrimbus season spectacular featuring comedian Neil Hamburger and rock band Pusswhip Banggang, performing their hits “Petite Feet” and “Sports.” And there will be plenty of sketch comedy and clips from the duo’s upcoming holiday movie, which Tim’s dad calls “a very funny goof and a spoof.”

There's a Classic/Serious-If-Only Slightly-Religious bracket (It's a Wonderful Life, a trio of Bing Croby flicks, a foreign ringer, The Bishop's Wife, Christmas in Connecticut, and Minnelli's masterpiece Meet Me in St. Louis).

And, finally, a Santa bracket that includes real, fake and evil Kringles (Miracle on 34th Street--the 1947 original, not the John Hughes cock-up--and Bad Santa are the best films in this lot).

I will not try to influence your vote, except to ask this question: Could you live with yourself if your vote led to a Robert Zemeckis-directed motion-capture abomination, or Jim Carrey movie--or BOTH IN ONE--won this competition?

Prediction: I'll bet it comes down to A Christmas Story vs. It's a Wonderful Life, and the latter wins.

Recently, the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra played one of only two U.S. dates in the Electric City. Now, internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn (pictured) and pianist Joseph Breinl will give one of only three U.S. recitals in Union College’s Memorial Chapel. (The other two are at Middlebury College and some joint called Carnegie Hall.)

Stotijn is a European favorite, having won the 2008 Dutch Music Prize and this year’s BBC Music Magazine vocal award for her recent Tchaikovsky recording. We presume she has sung for all remaining crowned heads of Europe, too. For this performance, she will sing works by Greig, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff.

Christianne Stotijn and Joseph Breinl will perform Saturday (Nov. 27) at 8 PM in the Union College Memorial Chapel (Schenectady). Tickets are $20 general admission, $8 area students. For more info, call 388-6080.

November 18, 2010

Tuesday morning, Scavo commented on the Times Union Blog in response to fellow legislator Wanda Willingham's attempt to convene the City Committe, which Albany Democratic Chairman Dan McCoy says no longer exists since a new chairman was not appointed following the elections.

His comment?: "Back of the bus sister, so sayest king MC coy, let us bow before master MC coy."

Yeah. He really said that--and pissed off a whole slew of folks in doing so.

Now Willingham, some of her Legislative colleagues, representatives of the NAACP and the Albany faith community and members of the Albany Common Council and the City Democratic Committee are holding a conference tomorrow (Friday, Nov. 19) at the former YMCA building on Washington Avenue at noon to condemn his comments and demand an apology.

"These comments are not only disrespectful and offensive to me but an affront to the entire African American community of Albany,” stated County Legislator Willingham in a press release issued earlier today. “Thoughts and comments such as this demonstrate ignorance of the history of the African American community and serve no purpose other than to divide our city. No one, especially an elected official should be heard uttering these words in 21st Century America.”

This afternoon, Scavo released an e-mail apology with the subject heading "Learning Experience."

"I see this as a learning experience and an opportunity to have an open conversation about diversity and cultural sensitivity without automatically branding each other a racist," Scavo's email reads.

"Now, I look forward to turning my attention back to passing a budget that meets needs of the resident’s of Albany despite of race, creed, color, age, sexual orientation, social status or otherwise without unreasonably raising taxes upon the people of Albany."

November 16, 2010

Sean Rowe is now on the Anti- label, and his new pals have something nice to say about him: "In the tradition of Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison, Rowe utilizes his extraordinarily soulful baritone, along with a poet’s skill, to sketch a world where man and nature lie down uneasily side by side." (Shoot, we already knew that.) Details . . . here.

If you want to catch up, here's an article on Mr. Rowe from April 2009.

November 15, 2010

It’s probably safe to move Trio Cavatina from the “up and coming” category to the “fully arrived” category; they’ve been around for five years now, and they won the 2009 Naumberg Chamber Music Competition. Their performance tonight in Glens Falls, as part of the deBlasiis Chamber Music Series, is a regional return engagement, having received good notices for a performance at Union College.

The program for Monday night is pleasingly varied. Along with Clara Schumann’s Trio and Robert Schumann’s Trioin G-minor, they will perform contemporary works by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz Torres (Trifolium) and New Yorker—OK, Long Islander—Augusta Reed Thomas (Moon Jig, a work the composer calls “a kind of cross” between 20th century classical music and jazz).

Pete "PhanArt" Mason is at it again. The devout Phish fan and Menands resident who brought us PhanArt: The Art of the Fans of Phish, a coffee-table compendium of parking-lot sticker art, posters and T-shirt design, has joined forces with Healthy Hippieeditor Taraleigh Weathers to bring us PhanFood: From the Kitchen Pot to the Parking Lot. That's right: An instructional cookbook and encyclopedic celebration of tour grub--from heady garlic grilled cheese to dank veggie burritos, "Ain't no time to stash the chicken and sausage gumbo," "Posternut bagels," and even goo balls.

The book is out on SUNY Press and there's going to be a launch event up at Nectar's in Burlington on Dec. 11. But if you can't make the haul and are still interested in the book, you can order it from their site. All net profits will benefit food pantries in towns that the band visits regularly.

November 12, 2010

I can not reccomend this show more highly. It borders on civic duty for me to make this blog post. I caught Mountain Man at Wilco's Solid Sound festival this summer, after binging on their album Made the Harbor all spring, and it was one of the most moving musical experiences I've had in recent memory. They'll be appearing at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy tonight as part of the Riot Grrrl Weekend (although their stuff isn't really riot grrrl-ie), along with author Sara Marcus. Show's at 7.

November 10, 2010

As a kid, I would sit glued to whichever of the three New York City TV channels we received in Great Barrington, Mass., was showing the most glamorous stars of the 1930s and 40s. I’d sit mesmerized as Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn or Ginger Rogers suffered beautifully. My favorites were the hard-to-find gems I had read about or been told about by my parents, which often starred forgotten actors like the incredibly underrated Kay Francis, a star of the first magnitude throughout much of the Depression. Happily for modern film buffs, the Warner Archive Collection has been releasing a spate of Francis flicks, and the result should restore some well-deserved luster to the actress’s legend.

Francis was quite tall, with a body that V-tapered from well-shaped broad shoulders to thin hips and mile-long legs. She was the ideal clothes hanger for the ravishing fashions that enchanted Depression-era women. In Give Me Your Heart, one of the newly released DVDs, Francis meets her morning guests wearing a shiny satin lounging gown with what could be mistaken for two Pomeranians attached to each voluminous cuff. It’s glorious, because the actress knew how to wear it. According to George Eells, writing in Ginger, Loretta and Irene Who?, Francis was no ordinary clotheshorse; she had an innate understanding of how clothes contributed to the depiction of a character.

Francis’ looks were a series of competing propositions. Her head was too small for her body, but was capped by glistening ebony locks. Her eyes were a little close-set, but could expressively evoke both sorrow and mirth. She had a beautiful voice, clearly an asset for the early talkies, but . . . did I mention her lisp? In her heyday, Warner Bros. paid screenwriters to make sure that Francis’s dialogue was not overly burdened by r’s or l’s, a practice that the studio notoriously reneged on when the actress’s movies began tanking at the box office, resulting in having to force out lines like “Gwegowy, the twain arrives in Mandalay tomorrow morning.” Still, in movies like the masterpiece Trouble in Paradise (not part of the collection, but available from the Criterion Collection), one could hardly notice any impediment, even when she lilts the famous line: “Marriage is a beautiful mistake which two people make together—but with you, François, I think it would just be a mistake.”

The new releases are a feast for old movie buffs, but beyond that, the individual titles demonstrate that Francis had real presence and an ability to ground a ridiculous plot with a powerful sense of meaning and immediacy. Take The House of 56th Street, in which Francis’ happy society matron ends up imprisoned on a manslaughter charge. Upon her release years later, there is a nice moment in which she confronts the city streets teeming with newfangled autos. What’s middle-aged ex-con to do but head to the nearest salon for a complete makeover? Thus transformed, henna’d and dripping in stylish duds, Francis seems wiser and stronger, underscoring the importance of style as well as her ability to connect with a Depression-era audience dealing with its own setbacks.

On Oct. 1, SUNY Albany announced that they would be terminating programs in French, Italian, Russian, Classics and Theater, and eliminating 160 positions in these fields. Needless to say. it's caused quite an uproar. Here's an interesting video, created by members of these departments and opponents of the cuts, maintaining the importance of these programs to the mission of public education.